Monday, December 24, 2007

A Little Christmas Thanks

After wishing someone Merry Christmas, I was deluged with a rant about how Christianity is the worst thing to ever grace mankind, and about the evils "my kind" have perpetrated on the world. "Thank God (yes irony I know), that enlightened people finally took over, or we'd be living in a backwards culture of oppression."

So a little Christmas reflection is in order.

Christianity was born into a barbaric Empire, where the Roman overlords crucified women with their children, forced people to fight for their lives against wild animals in the Colliseum, and widespread infanticide and pederastry. Despite widespread persecution, the Christians found their numbers grow, especially among classes of people who were considered worthless in Roman society (women, slaves, poor people, the lame, etc). Around the 3rd century, the message was accepted by the Roman emperor, and Christianity became the official religion. It wasn't enough to save the decadent Roman empire which collapsed of it's own corruption, ushering in the Dark Ages. For almost 500 years, the Church slowly rebuilt the society, taming the invading Germanic hordes into Christians. Due to the work of the Church, eventually we progressed out of the Dark Ages to the High Middle Ages.

Due to the Christian crusaders, the Muslim armies were repelled from Europe.

While the modern secularist loves to credit "rational thought" with reversing the great evils of the world, and Christianity with causing them, it is quite the reverse. The great thinkers of Greece and Athens didn't believe in the equality of every man, nor did they believe women were on the same level of men. Slavery and pederastry were not only tolerated, they were lauded. Infanticide was common place. Indeed, it is only in Christian writings that we see condemnations of such practices. The slavery abolishionist movement was almost exclusively Christian.

Even today, while the champions of "rationality" and "progress" love to claim themselves the arbiters of human liberty, it is still Christians who are standing up for life. The pro-life movement is explicitly Christian in nature. While secular rationalists are defending the death of innocent babies in the womb, partial birth abortion, infanticide, killing the disabled, euthanizing the old, and denying basic rights to life. The campaign to free Afghanistan from the oppressive taliban and Iraq from first Saddam and now al Quida is a Christian endevor. Meanwhile, the opposition is primarily leftist rationalists who decry our efforts. While the formerly Christian nations of Europe and Christian America are slavery free, much of Africa and the Middle East is not. The list goes on.

The point is, Christianity is the root of our nations morality, and our freedom stems from that. Far from being a backwards belief system that we were free from, the Founders Christian beliefs made this nation the greatest one on Earth, and we all benefit as a result.

Christianity and not secularism has been the driving force for equality and justice in the world. It is the triumph of our Founders Christianity over the world's previous secularism that is the reason we have unprecidented freedom. Just one more thing to celebrate this year.